Titanium and a number of its alloys continue to burn if high velocity air is flowing over its surface even after the igniting agent, e.g. a laser beam, is turned off. Due to the increased use of titanium in the production of aircraft, great concern, especially among the military, has been generated in suppressing titanium metal combustion due to laser exposure.
Suppression of such combustion was previously accomplished by evaporating a metal boride onto the surface of the metal. This procedure, however, is inconvenient to carry out and would be extremely difficult to perform on a large surface, such as the wing of an aircraft.